1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to dispensing apparatus for flavored food products, and more particularly to a mix of a relatively thick flowable base blended with one or more additional ingredients to provide a dispensed product having desired color, flavor, taste, aroma and/or texture according to selectable menus.
2. Description of Prior Art
U.S. Pat. No. 4,793,520 issued to me on Dec. 22, 1988 disclosed a device for use with conventional dispensing machines to add flavor, color, and a decorative feature to the frozen food being dispensed such as a soft-serve type of ice cream. Prior to dispensing the ice cream base mix, the person operating the machine selects one of eight flavors by operating a flavor selector switch. Then, upon pulling the discharge valve operator lever, the ice cream mix with selected syrup is delivered into a cup or cone as desired by the customer. A change of syrup for the next dispensing event is accomplished by operating a switch associated with the different syrup to be dispensed. While this patented device is effective for placement of a selected syrup in and on a frozen confection, it is also desirable to be able to blend flavors into a confection base.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,676,470 to Fox et al. discloses a device using blades 33 to whip into foam, a concentrate and diluent, for a dispensed beverage. The Giannella et al U.S. Pat. No. 3,934,759 discloses a multiple dispensing head for attachment to milk shake freezer machines instead of a conventional dispenser head, and provides for injection under pressure of an unflavored base such as milk shake mix and selected flavor syrup together into a premix chamber and then moved to a chamber where they are to be thoroughly mixed by motorized blades and forced downward through a dispensing nozzle into a serving container. The Seymour U.S. Pat. No. 4,881,663 discloses a soft ice cream dispensing apparatus having a multi-channel pump to direct a selected syrup or selected combination of syrups from reservoirs to a syrup nozzle head from which a plurality of nipples extend into the flow of soft ice cream. The operator may choose to dispense pure unvariegated soft ice cream or select any one of a plurality of different syrups to be introduced into the ice cream as it is dispensed. The Miller et al. U.S. Pat. No. 5,778,761 provides apparatus for dispensing pre-packaged neutral flavored mix stored within a serving cup, maintaining it at a pre-selected temperature so that syrups of one or more flavors can be added into the serving cup and mixed in the cup at the point of use.
It is an object of the present invention to provide apparatus and a method which, by simply attaching the apparatus to a standard, commercially available, confection freezing and dispensing machine, is useful for blending ingredients according to various recipes into a confection base, to produce and dispense the desired product.
According to a typical embodiment of the present invention, apparatus are provided for attachment to the dispensing head of a conventional machine for receiving a semi-liquid flowable base mix, and easily selecting and introducing one or more ingredients, and thoroughly blending such ingredients into the base mix to provide some feature or features detectable by the senses, such as color, flavor, aroma, taste or texture desired in the product dispensed into a serving container. Another aspect of the invention is to establish a limited back flow of the base material and injected ingredient/s during movement from the machine dispenser head to the apparatus dispensing outlet for thorough blending of the base material and selected ingredients.